The National Institute of Drug Abuse National Household Survey on drug abuse estimated that in 1991 there were approximately 12 million persons in the United States that abused drugs. This included approximately 4.5 million occasional abusers of cocaine and greater than 800,000 habitual users of cocaine. The United States government is projected to spend an estimated $12 billion in 1993 on federal drug control programs with an estimated $2.7 billion allocated to help defray the cost of drug treatment programs. Typical methods of drug treatment therapy include psychological counseling. Heroin addiction is sometimes treated with methadone therapy to permit gradual withdrawal, however, the replacement drug methadone is itself addictive.
It would be highly desirable to develop a method to neutralize or minimize the effects of controlled substances or addictive drugs thereby rendering continued abuse of addictive substances unproductive due to the reduced physiologic effect of the drug on the user. Additionally, a physiologic reduction of the action of the drug, or reduction of the rate in which the drug effects the mammalian subject, would help contribute to reduce the toxicity of the drug. Such a method would be highly desirable in the treatment of habitual substance abusers, in the prophylactic prevention of abuse, to reduce toxicity of drugs, and may provide an additional method to slowly release toxic anti-neoplastic drugs.